Unplugged: Breaking your television addiction

Chances are there’s some life wasting going on behind your front door right now. Spending hours each day staring into the eyes of your television can steal from you huge chunks of time during what could be the best years of your life.

SURE, THERE ARE a few channels that offer programming that awakens and educates. But are you actually watching them? If you are like I once was, you’re glued to the drivel that will very possibly lead to the undoing of your mind.

The End of My Life in TV Land

The last thing I remember, I was sitting on my sofa mesmerized by one of E! television’s latest offerings, a reality show starring jammie-clad Hugh Hefner ruling with an arthritic, vein-laden hand over his houseful of flavor-of-the-season surgically augmented hottie-pies. I think the program was called Girls Next Door. To my horror, I fell immediately in love with this post-modern-world household and was deeply disappointed to find myself delighted when another episode began airing immediately after the first. I had found a new favorite TV show.

Fortunately, my cable company staged an unwitting intervention just a few days later when an errant worker mistakenly disconnected my service as I watched from a window. I realized too late that my lifeline to the world of channel surfing was being snipped. Running down the street after his van yielded me only lungs filled with exhaust. My repetitive calls to reconnect service were handled by phony-voiced people saying no, he could not come back and simply reconnect me, I must go through the red-taped rigmarole of starting my service from square one.

There was no way I was enduring the stupidity of that exercise.

I only had watched television for a couple of hours a day previously but was stunned at the hole it left in my time. Pleasantly stunned.

So for four years I existed on the piddly programming my pocketful of broadcast stations eked out, with the help of precariously balanced rabbit ears. I only had watched television for a couple of hours a day previously but was stunned at the hole it left in my time. Pleasantly stunned.

I gradually and consistently lost interest in television until, finally, I would actually forget to turn it on for days, eventually weeks. Then arrived June 12, 2009 – the date the United States entered the digital age. And the date I hurled my television through the window. I mean the date I turned it on to find it spurting forth only static.

You don’t have to wait for an accidental intervention to save you from wasting your precious free time staring at a metal box on a shelf in your living room. Follow this six step program and shake yourself out of your TV trance now.

Step I – Admit You Have a Problem. If you pick up the remote before setting down your keys when you walk into your home, and if you routinely find your way from room to room after dark guided only by flickering lights and the echoing voices of people you’ll never meet, you probably have a TV addiction going on. You need to get over this. Admit it. Now move on to Step II.

Step II – Withdraw. Right Now. Cold turkey is the only way to kick this habit. Turning on the television for just a minute is like eating a peanut. There is no way you’re stopping right there. Give your TV to a friend, give it to a family member, sell it on Ebay, throw it away. Just get rid of it. Soon you’ll find happiness even when you’re not crumbling potato chips all over yourself while watching The Biggest Loser.

Step III – Comfort yourself. Surely you’ve got at least one more addiction going on. Go for it. Enjoy yourself. For a time, losing yourself in another familiar and comforting entity can lend some necessary emotional support to keep you away from the one addiction you’re trying to kill. It might be tricky not to let this take you over the way TV did. Quickly, your comfort of choice can grow from your security blankie to your full-fledged secondary addiction. Don’t allow yourself to get sucked in so deeply by your new habit that you won’t be able to emerge.

Step IV – Reconnect with the Real World. You’ll likely be floundering around, wondering what to do with your life now. Spend the new-found hours of your days cultivating your own friendships and relationships rather than vicariously living through your favorite TV people. Such socialization can do more than help just you. Give yourselves two thumbs up for luring your friends and family away from the flashing images on their own television screens.

Step V – Relish Your Freedom. As you continue to decompress, let yourself fly free in the absence of your nemesis. Don’t piddle away the hours you’ve gained by surfing the Internet. Engage in activities you love so that your life will be one of memories, not just one monochrome moment after another.

Step VI – Never Forget. Ridding yourself one hundred percent from a habit can take years. Don’t let water cooler talk and magazine covers at the grocery store pique your curiosity about what’s cooking in the lives of Jon and Kate plus their eight. This is addiction. Be prepared to fight it. It’s not heroin, though. You can do it.

Great stuff, Sabina. I agree that cold turkey is the only way to go. My wife and I did this in 2004 (sold the box to my sis–poor girl, she’s now suffering from an America’s Next Top Model addiction) and haven’t owned one since. We watch some shows and movies on the comp, but I find it very hard to watch TV at friends’ houses, bars, etc. now. The commercials! As soon as one starts, I must mute, power off, or leave. I will never watch another commercial.

Great one Sabina. We usually get rid of our cable when it’s not football season, but it’s hard to give up Oprah, Top Chef, Gilmore Girls, ANTM, and reruns of Beverly Hills 90210. Fortunately, or unfortunately, hulu feeds my addiction by providing the daily show, colbert, the office, and glee. I can’t seem to give it up.

kimayou Meigui

Great article!! I’m fortunate enough not to have been sucked into the tv addiction and the last time I had access to cable, I was too impatient to try to find something on the 60 some-odd changes to keep the static hum going, so I flipped off the tv and turned to my personal addiction: books. It’s a good thing, right? But when I have homework to do, a job to go to, and spontaneous travel to jump on, it does turn out to be a distracting addiction….
On another note, I love your style of writing!

Abbie – I considered internet addiciton while writing this. I addressed it (not by name) along with other addictions in Step III. I think people might have to go iive in a tree to get away from that one, though.

Candice – Thank you! And happily, I have been out of the realm of television for so long that I have no idea what you’re talking about when you write “A Shot at Love With Tila Tequilia”!

Nancy – The Gilmore Girls and 90210! Two shows that kept me way too glued to the tube! Loved those characters.

What ? You threw away a set of perfectly good Rabbit Ears ?
I’d a figured out a way to recycle them; make a great dual shish kabob thingy, or somethin’ !!!

Gotta be truthful. I wanted to be the first to comment here, so badly; I never got past the Rabbit Ears; started Tweetn, Bookmarkn’ and Stumblin’ and just got back to reading the rest of your Article, now !

What if the surrogate addiction is the Internet? I live in Canada, use rabbit ears although we’ve not gone digital yet, and I’m still able to waste hours watching TV. I didn’t have one for years, but it’s not only crept back into my life, now my addiction is further enabled by Internet streaming!

Count me in as one who gave up TV! Although I’ve owned a set most of my adult life, I only used it for tapes and dvds. Until… 2 weeks ago when I sold my tv because I wasn’t even watching dvds that much. Figured I’d rather have the cash earning interest in my travel account. I was spending more time on Matador which seemed a better use of my time 😉
Plus I loved having the space that the set took up.

I did have cable for 2 months a gazillion years ago and got rid of it because I was disgusted with how easily I got sucked into movies.
I can watch a dvd on my laptop if I need to.

Robyn, all right! Another fellow TV shunner! I think yours is a very impressive story – controlling your television set for years rather than letting it dominate your life. And then getting rid of your cable after only two months, followed by actually selling your TV – I wish I had such a noble tale to tell.

If throwing the TV out of the window (or selling to your sister) is too brutal, another solution is to put the TV in a narrow hallway or somewhere where you can’t sit down in a comfortable sofa and have to stand to watch.

Sabina

Sophie – that is a clever idea! I’m glad I don’t have to resort to that, though.

Jared Krauss

It really is an opening experience. Living in my dorm at college without a TV has really made my life for the better. I don’t miss it at all. Any TV shows that I wish to watch I can watch on my computer, the same goes for DVDs. The only time I am ever going to watch DVDs with another person is with my girlfriend, and laying on my futon with her and watching on my 15 inch works perfect.

Coming home, the only thing I like to watch is my Premier League and the History and Discovery channel. Even then, it get’s old pretty fast. Most of the time I end up tuning out and reading or getting on the internet, or writing.

Basically, it’s just a waste of time.

haitiangurl

OMG….

I am a television addict – I’m overruning my backpacking budget by staying only at hotels or hostals that have cable in the room. I mean who knew you could get Ally McBeal in Guatemala??? Its so comforting to come “home” and hear someone speaking english… sigh…

11 days into my trip across Central and South America and I already know the tv schedule here…

This is sad…

Lance

Having not strictly owned a TV (or a clock / wristwatch) for a number of years I still awe at how people can go without…there are many in public spaces; it is simple to maintain habits (or just punctuality) with no real ownership in urban settings.

Planted in places one doesn’t notice these devices; till one looks in earnest we risk jettisoning real social links for TV’s false ‘Friends’. Shudder to think how ‘glued’ I had been and shiver for those yet attached to the 50 minute hour. The internet with nano-second blogging is a re-iteration on the ‘stay-tuned’ meme; developing ones own moderate limits is time well spent.

Fewer uses of my DVDs and video games has been trying since rainy days do make for good double-bills or advancing-levels; can’t let go of everything, uh?!

I go through phases with tv, where I’ll be completely addicting to one show (right now it’s Dexter) and then I’ll stop watching for a while. Same with different movies or even books or lots of different things. I have a lot of interests that build up and then they get replaced by something else – but I’ll eventually revisit them.

I really miss not being allowed to have a tv, or not living anywhere near one. When I was studying abroad for six months, we weren’t allowed to have tv’s unless we had a license, and then for two of those months I was out in the middle of an archaeological dig.

That really helped me kick my addiction, especially since I used to be one of those people who would happily sit in front of the tv for 5+ hours watching complete trash. Now I don’t have any real desire to watch anything, and I don’t really watch movies any more either.

Too bad I can’t kick my internet addiction, especially since we rely so heavily on it for contact these days. It’d be nice to have a few months without that too.

Been without TV for going on 3 years now. You mentioned the ‘water cooler’ and I find myself lost in the majority of the TV conversations at the cooler. I get strange looks, that’s for sure, when I mention that I don’t have a television. I feel sorry for these people as they are missing the world go by.

Another thing I have noticed is that many girls I have date say it’s not right not to have a TV … I beg to differ.

Great article and interesting comments.

BAbblinGirl

I’ve recently joined this website, and was sitting here asking myself why I’ve been watching so much TV, and suddenly I come across your article. I found it very intriguing and very entertaining to read, and mostly, I’ve discovered a route I can take to rid myself of cookie munching while watching ‘The Biggest Loser”…1 of my current addictions.

I’ve always referred to the TV as the Idiot Box. If there was better content that engaged people’s minds and helped to reduce society’s apathy to most things SERIOUS, I’d be a happy camper. In essence, TV has contributed immensely to the DUMBING down of society.
I’ll admit I was Dallas/Falcon Crest/Knots Landing addict in grade 8 thanks to my mom. 🙁
Heck, she’s been a Young & The Restless addict for almost (yikes!!!) 40 years. Good lords!! She’s a goner…still coming home on time for her daily 4:30pm sessions. 🙂

Cartoons are different though. They help bring imagination to kids. I truly miss those legendary, creative cartoons (Bugs Bunny/Road Runner, Flintstones, Hong Kong Phooey, Tom & Jerry, Scooby Doo, and other greats) that gave me that priceless “child at heart” personality where I can laugh at anything. To me, that’s therapeutic.

Sadly, TV “programming” today has lost that magic — or innocence. As a result, society is more uptight and that’s reflected in less tolerance for things.

This is why I’m so thankful for sticking around in East Africa. I came for a 1 week business trip 4 years ago, but………………..

Capeta

Hi Sabina,

agree with you completely. There are many addictions that keep us disconnected from ourselves. I’m addictet, too, but have managed to reduce watching TV – apart from watching soccer (another addiction, especially here in Germany …).

the cast of Gilmore Girls are very pretty, i wish i could marry one of them.“;

Avery Jones

Thank you for the tips/ steps on breaking tv addiction. I just recently realized how much of my life is spent watching useless crap. Your writing is very helpful.

Supervalchi

I am watching this one stupid show and thinking about that show all the time. It is like a teenage girl having a crush over a boy and thinking about him all the time. And this show is becoming stupider and stupider, but I am addicted to it. I keep on watching it on their network site, going on you tube to watch older espisodes and the latest sneak peeks, reading what others are writing about it in other blogs. I started reading a different book jus tto get out of this addiction, but that book is not holding me. I keep thinking about this show and the characters even while reading that book.

Matt

What really gets me is that tv can eat up your time, while making it seem as though you are doing something when you are not. I’m amazed at how many hours I have pent watching tv, but its just so hard to stop all together. It is worse than cigarettes.

Venkat Narra

this is one of the miths we have to uncover ourselves weather we are addicted to TV, but this suggession is perfect way to come back to reality from Fantacy world.

The Art Lesson

I am addicted to TV and am currently trying to “kick the habit”. However, I watch all my TV online, not on an actual TV – thank God for Google chrome and its apps like “Stay Focused” and parental control apps. That way I can block TV sites and limit my time on non-work sites to 30min/day.